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This Kept My Kid Occupied for Ages

Note: I am an affiliate of Melissa and Doug and there are affiliate links in this post. But this actually happened yesterday, and I think this product is awesome. Carry on.

It often happens when a gift-giving occasion involving the girl comes around that she gets more gifts than she wants to play with immediately. I see this as a sign that we buy her too much, but I also think it’s a good thing because there’s pretty much always something new to be discovered in the house.

Yesterday we tried out two presents she got for her birthday back in September that hadn’t been opened yet. The first was this beautiful Djeco puzzle Leon the Dragon. (That’s an Amazon link because the Djeco site is slow loading and has music, but I’m not an affiliate.) This was fun, though a little tough because it doesn’t have straight sides, but it was a good challenge for both of us and I might buy some more of these lovelies for Christmas.

The second is something I bought her that I thought would be fun but nowhere to the extent it actually was: the Water Wow! Animals Travel Activity from Melissa & Doug. This is a set of four paint with water pictures with a sturdy coil binding that comes with a pen type brush. You fill it with water, then paint over the pictures, causing the color to come out.

The really cool thing is that they dry back to white, so you can paint them over and over again.

And boy, did the girl ever do that. For more than an hour, and I’m not even kidding. During almost all of her TV time yesterday she was doing this.

I love the vibrant colors on these pages.

She’d paint them, wipe on them with a paper towel (which does nothing, by the way, but she kept doing it), wait for them to dry and do it again.

So much so I had to put more water in the pen.

Another page in the book.

This was a huge hit just in the house, but it would be a great item to have for the car if you have a kid who loves drawing and painting. There’s no mess involved at all and it really is cute.

Other Water Wow! products include vehicles, letters and numbers in pads like the one shown here. There’s also a set of alphabet flash cards that can be clipped together for use while traveling.

The best part? The books are just $4.99 each. That was a lot of entertainment for $5. And I’ll bet she’ll go back to it again.

Do your kids love a gift you didn’t expect to be so popular? I’d love to hear about it!